Test if executable exists in Python?

Question

In Python, is there a portable and simple way to test if an executable program exists?

By simple I mean something like the which command which would be just perfect. I don't want to search PATH manually or something involving trying to execute it with Popen & al and see if it fails (that's what I'm doing now, but imagine it's launchmissiles)

Answer 1

you can tell if a file exists with the os module. an executable in particular seems quite unportable considering lots of things are executable on nix that aren't on windows and vice versa.

Answer 2

Easiest way I can think of:

def which(program):
    import os
    def is_exe(fpath):
        return os.path.isfile(fpath) and os.access(fpath, os.X_OK)

    fpath, fname = os.path.split(program)
    if fpath:
        if is_exe(program):
            return program
    else:
        for path in os.environ["PATH"].split(os.pathsep):
            exe_file = os.path.join(path, program)
            if is_exe(exe_file):
                return exe_file

    return None

Edit: Updated code sample to include logic for handling case where provided argument is already a full path to the executable, i.e. "which /bin/ls". This mimics the behavior of the UNIX 'which' command.

Edit: Updated to use os.path.isfile() instead of os.path.exists() per comments.

Edit: path.strip('"') seems like the wrong thing to do here. Neither Windows nor POSIX appear to encourage quoted PATH items.

Answer 3

Added windows support

def which(program):
    path_ext = [""];
    ext_list = None

    if sys.platform == "win32":
        ext_list = [ext.lower() for ext in os.environ["PATHEXT"].split(";")]

    def is_exe(fpath):
        exe = os.path.isfile(fpath) and os.access(fpath, os.X_OK)
        # search for executable under windows
        if not exe:
            if ext_list:
                for ext in ext_list:
                    exe_path = "%s%s" % (fpath,ext)
                    if os.path.isfile(exe_path) and os.access(exe_path, os.X_OK):
                        path_ext[0] = ext
                        return True
                return False
        return exe

    fpath, fname = os.path.split(program)

    if fpath:
        if is_exe(program):
            return "%s%s" % (program, path_ext[0])
    else:
        for path in os.environ["PATH"].split(os.pathsep):
            path = path.strip('"')
            exe_file = os.path.join(path, program)
            if is_exe(exe_file):
                return "%s%s" % (exe_file, path_ext[0])
    return None